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Whatever the shape of the next Parliament of Canada, we can be clear on one thing — it cannot work like the last one did.

This is the inevitable conclusion any Canadian should reach after watching the Conservatives endure a tense past week in the Mike Duffy trial and on the campaign trail.

It has taken a court and an election to shine the spotlight of accountability on Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s office in a way that simply hasn’t happened in the day-to-day life of Parliament Hill these past few years.

If we hadn’t a trial or an election, in other words, Harper and his Conservatives could probably have kept dodging, weaving and evading hard questions about how the PMO has been conducting itself — not just on Duffy, but on issues ranging from public mistruths to meddling in the Senate.

That’s how broken the 41st Parliament of Canada was. We couldn’t get answers until it was dissolved.

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It’s not as if the Commons has been ignoring these questions surrounding the Duffy case. On many days since the revelations about the Duffy payoff first emerged, the controversy was the prime focus of questions in the chamber. It’s just that no one in the government felt the slightest pressure to give a straight answer — ever.

On Wednesday, New Democratic Party Leader Thomas Mulcair was asked what he made of the revelations in court this week when Harper’s former chief of staff, Nigel Wright, finally had to fill in some big blanks surrounding the $90,000 cheque he wrote to Mike Duffy.

“What I take away from this, for having spent two-and-a-half years asking the prime minister questions about this, and most of the time getting no answer, is that the prime minister’s attempt to cover this thing up is not working,” Mulcair said.

That’s not the only thing that isn’t working. The “no answer” part of that remark deserves some thought, too. How, in a modern democracy, can a government give no answers whatsoever until pressed by the courts or an election campaign? Why is Parliament missing in action on accountability?

Mulcair has been much praised for his prosecutor-in-chief questioning of Harper throughout the Duffy debacle. But really, the courtroom analogy ends there.

In real courts, witnesses and defendants are forced to give answers, even when the replies lead them into the land of uncomfortable truths. In the Commons, answers, such as they are, come in the form of taunts, jeers or replies on other subjects altogether.

On any typical day in Question Period, for instance, Mulcair would ask a reasonably short, sharp question about developments in the Duffy case. Rather than answer, Harper would generally pivot to some kind of attack against the NDP. This was red meat for his cheering MPs in the background and Conservative supporters watching back home, but it did nothing to advance Canadians’ understanding of what happened.

On other occasions, when Harper wasn’t available or chose not to be available, he would throw someone else in front of the questions to make similar evasions or attacks on the questioner. Brownie points went to the Conservative MPs who sneered the most at opposition questions.

Contrast this with the pictures on the Conservative campaign trail this week, where Harper alone had to stand and take questions from the reporters. (Admittedly, it’s only four or five, but that’s four or five more than he usually takes from parliamentary reporters.)

Harper still has the cheering squads close at hand, in the form of colourful supporters — even some who are willing to swear at journalists, as we saw this week. But he doesn’t have the option to turn the questions into a counterattack on his questioners or to change the subject.

Nor can he throw anyone else in front of the questions. It’s the prime minister standing there, alone, answering for his office, his staff and his senators.

If this is uncomfortable for Harper, it’s understandable — he’s been living in a world that devises “media lines” and obfuscating, cynical communications strategies rather than simply answering the question. That world of dodge and spin was painted in more vivid detail in the PMO emails read aloud in an Ottawa courtroom this week, in all their smart-aleck-drenched cynicism.

No wonder, then, that Harper and his Conservatives appear unprepared for the higher bar of accountability required in a court or on the election trail. They’ve grown overconfident about their ability to spin their way out of any mess with deflection and non-answers.

Canadians can only hope that the last week has been a lesson, not just to Conservatives but to all future MPs, and that the next Parliament acts more like a national courtroom and less like the Parliament just dissolved.

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